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Update #129 Available for Download
The Office 365 for IT Pros eBook team is delighted to announce the availability of the March 2026 update for Office 365 for IT Pros (2026 edition). This is monthly update #129. An update (#21.2) has already been issued for the Automating Microsoft 365 with PowerShell eBook, which is available separately and as part of the Office 365 for IT Pros eBook bundle.
Current subscribers can download the updated PDF and EPUB files through their Gumroad.com account or using the link in the receipt emailed after purchase. The link always accesses the latest book files. Further details of how to access book updates are available in our FAQ. Details of the changes in update #129 are in our change log.
SharePoint Turns 25
On March 2, 2026, Microsoft will celebrate the 25th “birthday” of SharePoint with a “digital celebration event and live AMA.” Inanimate objects like software products don’t have birthdays, so the event marks when Microsoft first released the SharePoint Server 2001 product (the “release to manufacturing”, or RTM, date). In those days, releasing software was a matter of creating the master “gold” CDs and sending them to the manufacturing facility to be duplicated and made into a customer-facing product. This involved nice packaging and perhaps even printed documentation.
I worked as the Chief Technology Officer for the Compaq Global Services organization at the time and wanted to see how SharePoint Portal Server 2001 worked in production, so we installed a few servers and used them as the basis for a primitive but effective knowledge management system for Microsoft technologies.
I first wrote about SharePoint Portal Server soon after release for Windows 2000 Magazine (the article appeared in May 2001), and noted that both SharePoint and Exchange shared common storage technology. At the time, Microsoft called it WSS, or Web Storage System, but it was really just ESE, the Exchange Storage Engine. SharePoint adopted SQL Server storage for the 2003 release. At the time there was some pressure for Exchange to use SQL too (the “Kodiak” project), but that didn’t work out.
I thought SharePoint Server lost its way a little by overcomplicating things in the 2003 and 2007 releases; the online version has removed much of the complexity and made SharePoint Online into a core part of Microsoft 365. The introduction of Teams gave SharePoint Online a big lift because Teams gave SharePoint a nicer UI (the old browser UI was not great).
I find it amusing that many SharePoint fans parrot the marketing line that SharePoint Online powers Microsoft 365. SharePoint is an incredibly important part of Microsoft 365, but people can get value out of Microsoft 365 without ever touching SharePoint, directly or indirectly. In reality, SharePoint Online is the file storage service for Microsoft 365, no more and no less, a point I’ve been making for some time.
Exchange Reaches 30
Exchange Server is approaching 30 years old and will get there on April 2, 2026. I doubt that we’ll see the same kind of Microsoft celebrations for Exchange simply because Exchange Online doesn’t have the same kind of marketing heft that exists for the SharePoint and Teams organization.
At the Ignite 2025 conference, I met Iain McDonald, who did many things in the early days of Exchange (read his LinkedIn post for details), and we had a great conversation about his work with Exchange and Windows (especially Windows 2000). Iain seems to pop up every ten years because the last time we had a conversation, it was about Exchange’s 20th anniversary.
I didn’t like Exchange 4.0 very much at the start, mostly because the 1995 “Alliance for Enterprise Computing” agreement between Microsoft and Digital Equipment Corporation killed a NT-based DEC mail server. But I got used to Exchange and ended up writing ten books about the server, including the Microsoft Press Inside Out books for Exchange 2010 and Exchange 2013.
Exchange Online is the messaging service for Microsoft 365. More people use Exchange Online than use SharePoint Online. Very few of the more than 450 million paid Microsoft 365 seats (and the substantial number of free seats) don’t use Exchange Online, even if they don’t realize it. In the past, the Microsoft marketing machine has told the world that Yammer (now Viva Engage) and Teams would eliminate email. That just hasn’t happened, even if a lot of interpersonal messages flow through Teams rather than email.
The point is that people need to communicate and store knowledge. Exchange Online and SharePoint Online act as great enablers and services within Microsoft 365. Decades of development have delivered great software, even if both services have caused me to swear profusely in the past.
On to Office 365 for IT Pros Update #130
Office 365 for IT Pros started off in 2015 with a focus on Exchange Online. In those days, that’s where most of the Office 365 action was. Organizations migrated email first because the migration facilities were available. SharePoint migration tools came later and Teams arrived in 2017. Over the last 129 updates, we’ve gradually evolved our content to create balanced coverage across Entra ID, SharePoint Online, Exchange Online, Teams, OneDrive for Business, Planner, Purview, and lots more.
On we go to update #130, due on April 1. Microsoft doesn’t stop issuing updates for Microsoft 365, and we don’t stop analyzing, questioning, and reporting on what they do.